


Closer Still

by MithrilWren



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Getting to Know Each Other, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Trapped, except instead of an elevator it's a pocket dimension created by two overexcitable wizards, explicit hand holding, trapped in an elevator trope, who don't know the meaning of the word patience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22534012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MithrilWren/pseuds/MithrilWren
Summary: Caleb and Essek's latest foray into magical experimentation goes awry, leaving them stuck together in a pocket dimension of their own creation.Or, "trapped in an elevator, but make it fantasy".
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 56
Kudos: 651





	Closer Still

“There isn’t a door,” Caleb says, as he stares out into the formless void. “There was supposed to be a door.” They had planned - in all their meticulous notes on interdimensional spaces and incremental trials, in every mutual assurance that _we will start with the simplest scenario, for safety's sake_ \- for there to _be a door._

“No, there isn’t,” Essek agrees.

In fact, there’s nothing at all. Which is… worrisome. 

Caleb is, to a certain extent, familiar with inter-planar spaces. He’s studied them aplenty over the years, both from books and his own intuition. Frumpkin presumably hails from a pocket dimension much like this one when not with Caleb, which should be a comforting thought. Given their actual circumstances, it is wholly _not_. 

The emptiness stretches on forever, in every direction - a phantom sea of black that lacks dimension and boundary, but still feels _confined._ The manner and shape of the confinement isn’t something his mind can fully wrap itself around, but his body seems to instinctively shrink back regardless, hearkening towards a non-existent center, which is merely the place they appeared. The only thing outside himself is Essek, still clad in his mantle and balancing an open book in one hand, that contains their notes for the spell they now find themselves trapped within: pages of calculations and predictions and copied phrases from Halas’s work.

The first step had seemed self-evident, at the time - obvious to both of them in the same breath, a singular shared thought. When their eyes met the spark was palpable, and away they went. It was a simple application, far simpler than what they attempted with Nott. Combining Essek’s knowledge of dunamancy with Halas’s successes on time dilation - along with Caleb’s own work on the vault of amber - had seemed almost _too_ easy. It had taken less than a day to design the rudimentary spell, and less than two hours to collect the necessary components, and then... after all, why wait? They were ready, quicker than they could have believed, to test the results. Here, in a space all their own, they might begin to recreate a little of the Happy Fun Ball’s mystery.

Only, at every stage of this feverishly hurried plan, in every hastily sketched schematic and ink-stained diagram, they had always meant for there to be a way out. A door, back to the material plane.

And there’s nothing. Literally, _nothing._

“This is certainly a… predicament,” Essek says lightly. Too lightly, and he is not such an accomplished liar that Caleb can’t sense the hint of unease beneath his steady words. “Perhaps we moved too quickly - there must have been a variable we missed.”

Caleb reaches his hand out, feeling towards the edge of… well, there isn’t an edge. The space has no frontier, and its absence comes as as much of a surprise as the missing door. When he’d read of such magic before - spells to create demiplanes, and things of that nature - the books had always included descriptions of rudimentary walls of stone or wood. Here, there’s only the endless expanse. It’s almost akin to the beacon’s limitless interior, if all the stars within had been snuffed out. 

There _is_ a floor, however. That’s even stranger, because it certainly doesn’t look like there is. Essek still hovers a few inches higher than Caleb, but his own feet rest on a surface no more solid than the immaterial blackness above their heads. It doesn’t make sense. There’s nothing to be standing _on._

The moment the thought occurs to him, Caleb begins to fall. 

The terrifying descent lasts only a few seconds before Essek’s arm shoots out and grasps his shoulder. Gasping, Caleb jerks to a stop and finds himself… exactly where he started, the unseen floor beneath his feet yet again. He claps a hand over his mouth as his stomach heaves. 

Essek’s fingers uncurl from his shoulder as quickly as they’d snatched it, and Caleb presses his hand down all the harder, like it will keep his breath inside of him. He squeezes his eyes shut, which helps. His body can accept the emptiness when it can sense a reason for it.

“The vertigo will pass,” Essek says softly, but closer now. The vicinity around his shoulder buzzes, like something hovers there, unseen. “I’ve seen the same reaction in those unaccustomed to a dunamatic field. Your body will find equilibrium, once you accept the reality that cannot be seen.”

Mostly reassured by that logic, by _any_ logic that his mind can cling to, Caleb opens his eyes. Essek is still a few feet behind him, like he hadn’t moved at all. No indication that he’d even gotten near enough to touch Caleb’s shoulder. No reason for why his voice sounded close by, only moments before. Abashed, he opens his mouth as he steps forward, meaning to thank Essek-

And immediately pitches forward onto his knees. Only his knees have nothing to land on, his hands have nowhere to scrabble towards, and he is spinning, the room- not a room, _nothing-_ is spinning, and there’s nothing holding him together as he falls-

“Caleb!” Essek’s shout, unmasked and truly unsettled at last, rattles through Caleb, and he can’t stop moving in place, like he’s spiralling out of control, like his body doesn’t belong to him-

The buzzing returns, and tense fingers find his shoulders again, dragging him back up into something like a kneeling position. “You need to focus,” Essek is saying, _reprimanding,_ voice harsher now for the worry that lies beneath the words, and the expanse is dark, and there is nothing, and as the panic reaches a crest, then a lull, he becomes nothing too.

Caleb knows what it means, to float away. It’s protection, like every other piece of armor he wraps himself with. But knowing what it is doesn’t mean that he can stop it from happening. 

Hands gone cold and numb, he curls into himself as best he can, turning his face down- there isn’t a down- every direction is down, oh gods- and tries to make himself small-

Essek’s fingers him release again. His breath comes out sharply somewhere above Caleb’s ear. “What’s happening, Caleb?” More quietly, “Talk to me.”

He doesn’t want to talk. Doesn’t like talking, in this state. Talking is… difficult, and he clamps his mouth down harder, determined at least not to be sick. He doesn’t know what would happen to the vomit, if he did. Would it even fall away, in a void like this, or would it hover in the air like Essek’s feet? He can’t help but giggle at the thought, and the laugh is a wrenched thing, short and torn. His mind drifts further still. 

Something dark and heavy falls over his head - thick material, soft but clinging. It catches in the strands of his hair, blanketing him from his forehead to the small of his back, and with slightly shaking fingers he reaches up and draws the fabric closer around him. The sensation is such an unexpected shock that his breath stutters, slowing to a less frantic rate as he centers on the feeling of the weighty mantle over his head, and the strangeness of it all.

“Does that… help?”

The buzzing. Essek is thinking of touching him, he realizes. Caleb reaches one hand out from below the cloak, feeling for Essek and still finding _nothing._ He draws it back beneath as the panic begins to build again. A moment later, there’s a solid presence at his side, and an arm wrapping around his shoulders - cloak and all - gripping almost too tightly for comfort. The pressure is unexpected, and exactly what he needs. 

“Is any of this helping?” Essek asks again, still so uncertain, and now that the feeling is returning to Caleb’s body, he can begin to sense the tension in Essek’s. At least he’s not the only one uncomfortable.

“You are real,” Caleb says hoarsely, which seems a sufficient answer in his own head. _Something here is real._ If Essek doesn’t understand his meaning, he doesn’t have the energy to explain. “Yes, it is helping.”

“...I’m glad.” Only then does Essek’s death grip on Caleb’s shoulder relax, and he steels himself to be let go of again, chest squeezing as he anticipates the absence, but Essek only changes position, readjusting the mantle so it drapes more fully over Caleb before settling back into the awkward, one-armed hug.

Beneath the cloak, the darkness of the floor could just be the lack of light. It gets a little easier to breathe, and Caleb leans his head against what he assumes to be Essek’s shoulder as he pulls his knees under the cloak as well.

“We should leave here, as soon as possible,” Essek says. “I did not expect you would have such an adverse reaction.”

“How do we leave? There’s no door.” Caleb’s words feel sluggish, slow, like they always do in the minutes after a bout like this. He’s probably repeating himself. Maybe. He doesn’t have it in him to care, at this present moment.

“I… don’t know. If we had simply gone to a remote part of the material plane, this would be easier.” Essek says, frustrated. “I have no experience teleporting across planes. I suspect if I tried, we would be ripped apart, or worse.”

“Could we dispel it?” Caleb says. _This is a problem._ A problem with a practical solution. That’s good. That’s something to focus on. 

“From the outside, perhaps. But the plane itself isn’t magic, only the spell that created it. And I’m not sure I want to find out what would happen to the creatures inside an artificial plane if it were dispelled.”

“I imagine we could be lost forever,” Caleb says. “Like Halas, trapped in his gem for eternity. Only not in a place that a group of merry assholes would stumble upon us.”

“What of your group of ‘merry assholes’?” Essek suggests. “Presumably they’ll come searching for you eventually.”

Caleb nods, only realizing belatedly that Essek can’t see his face. “Nott will wonder where I am. They all will, if I don’t return tonight.” Only, would the others think to worry right away? They know he spent the day with Essek, and that they’re both apt to work long into the night when engrossed in a project. How long will it be, before someone comes looking? “And what about your... coworkers? Will the Bright Queen miss you in court, if you don’t report in?”

Essek sighs, and the exhale flows into Caleb’s chest, the movement of his body moving Caleb’s as well. The back of his neck begins to prickle. He’s grateful now for the cloak for two reasons; his skin is too pale not to show a blush. Even if the situation is far from romantic, this kind of proximity to another person’s body is almost uncomfortably intimate. And it’s hard to separate his own embarrassment from embarrassment on Essek’s behalf. Neither one of them gives casual touch easily, and it feels too close to taking advantage, to ask it of him now, without allowing him a way to refuse. 

Caleb begins to shift away by millimeters. 

“I imagine, after a day or so. But she trusts me to use my time well, as I see fit. I’m generally left to my own devices unless explicitly summoned.”

 _A day or so._ Well, if they’re to be trapped here that long, Caleb may as well start acclimatizing now. He doesn’t intend to spend countless hours wrapped in swaddling clothes, nor could he expect Essek to keep up the same treatment, centering as the touch may be. Even now, the arm that wraps around his shoulder is beginning to shake, and without being able to see Essek’s face, Caleb judges the tension to be discomfort on Essek’s part. 

Reluctantly, Caleb shrugs out of the half embrace and reaches up to draw the fabric down from over his head. Essek makes a soft noise of protest, but doesn’t stop Caleb from completing the movement. He drops the mantle in his lap and balls his fists into it, eyes still squeezed shut. 

No buzzing this time. Maybe Essek has finally tired of holding Caleb up.

“I’ll be alright,” Caleb murmurs. “The worst is past, I think.”

He swallows, willing his words to be true as he forces his eyes to open. The darkness is still waiting there, so he turns his head instead to Essek, keeping his gaze focused on the details of his garb - the gentle greys of folded cloth, the intricate embroidery along his belt, the slender line of his fingers, folded neatly in his lap and held there, meticulous in their stillness. Essek’s hands are stained with ink and chalk and golden flecks of dust, and Caleb had been thinking only a few minutes before they left, how very strange it was, to see such elegant fingers dirtied as much as his own.

Caleb doesn’t look him in the eye. It still seems too personal, for all of that. 

They’re both sitting now, in a way, and maybe that helps too. It’s easier to believe the not-there floor is actually beneath them when Essek’s legs, tucked neatly to one side, are also touching something seemingly solid. 

Caleb pulls the mantle over his lap like a blanket, not quite ready yet to surrender the comforting weight. Then he places his hands on his forearms and begins to scratch at the long sleeves. That pressure is soothing in a different way. It’s a more familiar kind of comfort, as he digs the nails in deeper. He thinks he catches Essek’s eyes narrowing, but it’s been a long time since he’s been able to stop the habit, no matter who watches on.

As a last ditch effort, Caleb snaps his fingers. Unsurprisingly, Frumpkin doesn’t appear. The cat is tethered to the material plane, not this pocket one. Mouth twisted in displeasure, he returns to the scratching with renewed vigour.

“Tell me if it gets bad again,” Essek says. Even if his words are unassuming, he’s still watching Caleb’s hands too closely.

“I will,” says Caleb, not quite sure yet if he’s lying, but eager to change the subject regardless. “After an hour, the spell will expire anyway. Who knows? Maybe we’ll be ejected when it does.”

“That’s certainly a possibility,” Essek says. “Let’s hope.”

“Let’s hope.”

Essek falls silent, almost meditative, and in the absence of his voice there’s nothing but silence either. At least the beacon had a sort of hum to it, a cosmic energy - brimming with what he now knows as _life,_ unimaginable and vast. This feels more like the quiet rooms of the asylum, where they hung dark sheets against the wall, to muffle the sound of-

Caleb digs his nails in harder. The memory stutters and shifts, and he can breathe again, for a few minutes more.

“Forgive me,” Essek says, then reaches out and takes Caleb’s wrist in his hand, drawing it away from his arm. “I…” His mouth twitches, and he turns his head away. “I’m afraid you’ll break the skin. I don’t have healing magic like your compatriots, and we don’t know how long it will be before-”

“Essek,” Caleb warns, because by the quickening pace of Essek’s words, it seems like he’s not the only one in a spot of panic anymore. 

“I don’t enjoy watching you hurt yourself.” 

The instinct to apologize is almost too great to fight, but he manages to reign it in. It isn’t what Essek is looking for, what will make him stop watching Caleb so intently, after such a forlorn admission. No, what he needs is _reassurance._ “Well,” says Caleb. “I think you will like it better than the alternative.”

“Which is?” He still hasn’t let go of Caleb’s wrist. Caleb doesn’t try to fight him. He’s not sure if he wants to.

“Me losing my head,” Caleb mutters. “Trust me, I’ve learned how to cope with... _stressful_ situations. This is effective.” 

There. They’re both practical people. _Rational_ people. An explanation like that should keep Essek off his case.

Then why hasn’t his hand moved?

“Just because it is effective, doesn’t mean it won’t hurt you.”

Caleb can’t help but smirk at that, the bitter irony sharp on his tongue. “You are more right than you know.”

Essek abruptly releases his hand, almost startled, like he hadn’t realized he was still holding it. “Forgive me, again. That’s three times now that I’ve touched you without permission.”

Oddly, Caleb finds himself more touched by that nervous courtesy than by the gesture itself. In a rush of reckless, unexpected affection, he reaches out and grabs Essek’s hand. Essek freezes. “There’s nothing to forgive. It helped.” He pauses. “It all helped. Thank you.”

Essek stares down at their entwined hands, and Caleb chances drawing a thumb across the smooth skin at the back of his knuckles. He half expects to be pushed away once more. But Essek endures the touch, and eventually even squeezes back. 

Breathless for a new reason, Caleb slides his fingers down, until they’re laced with Essek’s. It’s almost like a game, to see who will push the moment farther, first, and Caleb is so entranced that he nearly forgets where they are. 

Essek’s fingers are softer than his own, and darker. They’ve borne less days on horseback, weathered fewer storms, seen less battle and flame. The skin feels so different, yet it’s stained, same as his. 

All of this is so new.

“Alright,” says Caleb softly. “Instead, tell me something, to take my mind off this place.”

“What would you like to hear?” Essek’s voice cracks near the middle, a veneer of composure chipping away, and Caleb knows now he’s not the only one affected. 

Neither of them have pulled away yet.

“What was your childhood like? Was it happy?” Caleb flicks his eyes up to Essek’s, to find Essek staring right back, his eyes as wide as Caleb’s ever seen them, dark and alight from within. “Were you loved?”

“Yes,” says Essek. “And no. To all questions.”

Caleb smiles wryly. “That’s an answer, but not a very good distraction.”

Essek’s lips twitch. “I suppose you’re right.” He sighs. “My mother loved me, as much as any parent loves their child. But she had many responsibilities. And... “ The fingers between Caleb’s tense. He smooths his thumb down the side of Essek’s hand again. “Well,” Essek says, half-smiling, half-sad. “I think she was afraid to feel too much, before she knew for certain.”

Caleb’s own smile drifts away. He doesn’t know the direction of this story, but he thinks he knows the shape of it. “Knew what?”

“Who I was.” Essek shakes his head. “Everyone assumed I would start regaining memories of my past life when I reached adolescence, as so many do. She had no guarantee that by the age of twenty, I would still be the boy she raised. I believe she was… waiting. To fix her estimation of me, until she knew who I would become. I could have even been the vessel of someone she knew in a past life. How _uncomfortable_ it would be _,_ to feel a mother’s affection for an old friend.” Essek shrugs. “But her waiting was in vain. I never became anything, and by then it was already too late. I left home soon after it became clear that the memories were never coming - which did _not_ please my father, I might add - and here we are. Still friendly, but distant.” 

Caleb purses his lips. He doesn’t have anything to say that seems adequate, but he squeezes Essek’s hand again.

“Can I ask you something in return? ...No, that’s not what I meant to- I’m sorry, my phrasing was poor. You need not answer if you don’t wish to.”

There it is again, that consideration. Wanting to respect Caleb’s boundaries. When they first met, Caleb had envisioned all sorts of things Essek might ask of him in return for the favours they owed. Familiar things. _Dark_ things. Things that he would despise with every inch of his being, but would have had no choice but to endure without complaint, for the sake of his friends. 

It seems all so incongruous now, to picture Essek making those sorts of demands. Caleb feels… secure, with him. Safe, almost.

_Safe._

He doesn’t use that word often.

“I’ll do my best to answer, if I can.”

Essek lifts his other hand and, after a careful look, places it just above Caleb’s wrist. He brushes back the sleeve, revealing a sliver of bare skin. “The scars you bear… where did they come from?”

Six months ago, the question itself might have sent him right back into a spiral of panic, but having shared the story twice now, he finds the thought of recounting it less fearful than it was before. 

It occurs to him that he could lie. And perhaps he _should_ lie. Essek is, after all, still their handler, at least in name. Foolish, to give up something so personal to a spymaster. But Essek asked. And Essek has proven himself trustworthy before.

And Caleb finds himself very weary of lying.

“They were given to me,” he starts, “by my teacher.”

Essek, to Caleb’s relief, doesn’t flinch or grimace at the admission, but his eyes narrow a little more. “A punishment?”

Caleb shakes his head. “A means to make us stronger, and… hmm. To advance his own knowledge. An experiment.” He thinks of all the pages spread out over Essek’s desk, still waiting on their return. 

An experiment gone wrong, that’s what’s trapped them here.

_How very far we mages are willing to go, just to learn that little bit more._

“You said before that you were trained within the Empire. Was this teacher employed by the government?”

“He was part of the Assembly.” Essek’s fingers twitch. “Trent Ikithon was his name.” Caleb glances up, and sees the mask of unreadable interest is beginning to shift. Bits of dawning realization live in the crease of Essek’s brow, the slight widening of his eyes. “But, of course, what he did was for the good of the Empire. Like you said before, few necessary choices are moral ones, and Trent made it his living to walk that line.” His words twist up with bitterness, and he can’t help the pointed barb. 

It’s been lingering in the back of his mind, Essek’s comments over dinner, all those nights ago. He can’t blame Essek for being drawn in by the allure of the moral grey that the Assembly exemplify. After all, he spent many years under the same spell. But Essek is not the same as Bren. He grew up under a different sort of indoctrination. He can still be reasoned with, made to see the Assembly for the danger they represent. Caleb needs to believe that.

“Back then, I believed he had my best interests at heart, and more importantly, the best interests of my country. But now… I cannot see any justification good enough to excuse all he did to us. The experiments... and everything else.”

Essek’s hand still rests above his wrist, fingertips grazing the first of the scars. 

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen, at least. Not a child,” he clarifies. It feels important, somehow, to make that distinction. To say that he was too young to know his own mind would be a justification for his own actions, and he refuses to make it one. Even if he has no intention of revealing the end result of his training, even if Essek never asks about his parents’ fate and he never answers, in his own mind, he cannot stand to make his age an excuse. 

Essek breathes out slowly. “Sixteen is still a child, in the eyes of the Kryn. At sixteen, life has only begun.” 

Caleb stubbornly swallows around the lump in his throat. Telling this story has gotten easier, but his body still betrays him, every time.

“ _Ja._ Perhaps you’re right. I felt for a long time, that sixteen is where my life ended. Many things happened after that, and I would not call what I was for the years that followed ‘alive’. It’s only recently- since I met the others, that I started to wonder if there was still something left. Some life I could still live, after all of this is done. I don’t know yet if that is true. But… I want to believe it is.” 

Caleb looks down at their hands, still intertwined. He has thought, in scant moments, that there was something there between the two of them - something growing, inch by inch, in the shrinking space between. 

When they first met, there were so many barriers in that space. They were handler and subject, favour-giver and debtor, reluctant allies from two worlds at war. But now the platforms have shifted, and the ledges that seemed insurmountable have become, by nature of perspective, very small.

Something between them.

Some life he could still live…

“I’m sorry,” Essek says at last. There’s a husky edge to his voice that Caleb isn’t sure he’s ever heard from him before. “I’m sorry this was done to you.” Essek’s thumb starts to trace hesitant lines down the edge of Caleb’s hand - a nervous approximation of what Caleb had done for him. The rush of endearment that comes from the realization is almost overwhelming, and Caleb bites the inside of his cheek to keep his breath from stuttering out as he speaks.

“It was a long time ago.”

Essek’s thumb doesn’t pause, and eventually Caleb leans over and rests his head on Essek’s shoulder, feeling brave and exhausted in the same turn. His head is heavy, emotions wrung out from anxiety and release and too many hours of frantic work leading up to this moment. His eyes begin to close, and he lets them. After a long, long moment, Essek’s body begins to relax as well. 

He isn’t sure, after the fact, which one of them is the first to drift off to sleep.

\---

Caleb wakes to the bright light of morning spilling out of the skylight above his head. He blinks, confused, up into the eyes of a familiar blonde-haired mage. 

“Welcome back,” Allura says, and her pleasant smile is tinged with just the slightest hint of exasperation.

Beside Caleb, Essek groans and curls over onto his side, pulling his hands up beneath his chin as if cradling a pillow and turning away from the light. So, Essek is not a morning person. He tucks that information away, still impossibly endeared. 

They aren’t holding hands anymore, but he can’t help but notice that Essek’s mantle is spread across them both. 

“I assume you are our rescuer?” Allura offers Caleb a hand and he takes it. As the mantle falls away from his lap and hits the floor, Essek startles awake with an undignified gasp. Off to the side, Jester giggles. 

He sees the rest of the Nein hugging the edges of the circular room, looking equal parts relieved and annoyed. “Maybe tell us next time you two decide to go traipsing off to another dimension?” Fjord grumbles, his arms crossed over his chest. “You’re lucky Nott knows how to read your notes, or we’d have thought you’d just disappeared.”

“Which is totally cool,” Beau adds, smirking as she looks pointedly at the shared cloak. “You guys want alone time, that’s a-ok. Just like, let us know ahead of time, so we don’t send out the cavalry to find you.”

Nott rushes up and wraps her arms around Caleb’s middle. “The pages said the spell should only last for an hour, so we called Allura after Jester couldn’t reach out. ...We did good, right, Caleb? You wanted to be rescued, right?” She also eyes the shared cloak dubiously. 

“You did good,” says Caleb, rustling her hair. “Thank you for coming to our aid. And thank _you,”_ he says, turning to Allura. “You must be tired of rescuing foolish mages from prisons of their own making.”

“All part of the job description, as I’m finding out,” Allura says mildly, dusting off her robes. “Next time, please double check your work more carefully.” She sighs, then gathers her bag to her side. “Alright, I’m off - hopefully, I’ll be back before my wife notices I’m missing and gives me an earful.” Essek, finally having picked himself off the ground, opens his mouth to try and offer his own thanks, but Allura is already gone. 

Caleb turns back to Essek, who is currently in the process of smoothing down his hair back into its usual elegant coif. It’s only partially successfully - a few strands still stick up at odd angles - and Caleb grins sheepishly.

“Not a great success, was it?”

“No, it was not.” Essek turns instead to brushing out the wrinkles from his tunic, which only draws attention to its current rumpled state. Jester giggles again, and Essek flushes, but resolutely does not look in her direction. “Still, at least we learned something?”

He offers his hand to Caleb for a congratulatory shake. Back to business as usual, it seems. There can be nothing more, before so many watching eyes. Even so, there’s a sort of tremor in Essek’s hand - an anticipation, that wasn’t there before.

_I think we both learned more than we set out to._

Caleb gives Essek a small smile, and takes it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm 90% certain I stole the idea of the "blanket over the head" from an anime, but I can't for the life of me remember which one. If anyone knows, tell me! My internet searches have been in vain. EDIT: Turns out it was Ouran High School Host Club! Thank you, enemytosleep and purplenerd777 :)
> 
> Find me at [mithrilwren](https://mithrilwren.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!


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